Todd Strasser - Kill You Last

She was right. Not only were the addresses different, but the writing styles, too. Ashley’s e-mails were all written in texting style, with abbreviations like “2” for “to” and “U” for “you.” The e-mail from the other vengeance wasn’t.

Someone else… someone pretending to be Ashley… had threatened to kill me.

“Oh my God, I am so sorry,” I gasped, my jumbled emotions making my eyes grow watery again.

“No, it’s okay.” Ashley touched my arm. “We all make mistakes. Mine were way worse than yours.”

That may have been true, but I still felt miserable and confused. Here was this sweet girl who’d been taken advantage of by my father. The old question gnawed at me: Why? Why would he do something so awful? Were all men like that? Or just my dad? But as painful as that question was, I knew it was less pressing and less immediate than the new question that had formed in my thoughts: if Ashley hadn’t sent the e-mail threatening to kill me, then who had?

The afternon was warm and sunny, one of the last days of Indian summer. When I got home from school, the crowd of media was gone, and Mom was washing her car in the driveway. Her car was something of a family joke because she never drove it farther than the supermarket, and it probably hadn’t been outside of Soundview since the day she bought it. And yet, being both frugal and compulsive, once a month she spent an afternoon cleaning and washing it.

“Oh, I can see this car really needs cleaning,” I teased.

“Well, it does get dusty,” she replied. Maybe it was the warmth of the afternoon, but it seemed like she was in a good mood. The news of Janet being arrested had to be a relief.

“Oh my God!” I gasped playfully. “It’s really blue? I always thought it was black.”

“Very funny,” Mom replied with a smile. “Help me with the mats?”

She’d already washed the floor mats, and they were drying in the sun. We put them back in the car, then she handed me a rag and a spray bottle of Armor All.

“What do you do with it?”

Mom rolled her eyes as if she couldn’t believe I didn’t know.

“Don’t give me that look,” I said, pretending to be offended.

“I almost said, ‘You are so much your father’s daughter,’” she said. “But thank God you’re not. Not really.”

I knew she’d meant it lightly, but at the mention of his name, things darkened for me, as if the sun had gone behind a cloud. Mom must have noticed.

“Well,” she said, as if trying to salvage the situation, “at least they’ve figured out who did it.” She gestured to the bottle of Armor All. “Wipe down the dashboard and interior plastic like the door panels and handles, but try not to get it on the windows.”

I did as I was told, and gradually forced the dark thoughts about Dad out of my head. Even though it seemed that I’d been wrong to hope that this crisis might bring Mom and Dad closer, maybe there was still an unexpected silver lining-the crisis might bring Mom and me closer.

She brought the shop vac from the garage and cleaned out the trunk. We worked silently, but I still felt a closeness to her that I’d missed. Once all this was over, I promised myself I would try to patch up our relationship and spend more time with her.

When we were finished, Mom put the car in the garage and we walked back to the house.

For the first time in a very long time, she asked, “How was school today?”

“Not so great.”

“How come?”

I hadn’t planned on telling her about Ashley, but now I thought that I should. I felt like I needed someone to talk to, and obviously it couldn’t be Dad. Besides, Mom already knew about the e-mails from vengeance@gmail. com.

“Remember Ashley Walsh?” I asked.

Mom dipped an eyebrow. “I remember the name…”

“She and I used to be friends, like back when Dad coached my soccer team. She’s the one whose father lost his job and they had to sell their house and move into an apartment?”

“Oh yes,” Mom now recalled. “Tall and pretty. Sort of quiet.”

“That’s the one. Anyway, it turns out she was the one sending me those anonymous e-mails.”

Mom stopped and stared at me with a quizzical expression.

“She thought Dad was guilty,” I explained.

Mom scowled. “Lots of people thought your father was guilty, but they didn’t send anonymous e-mails.”

Suddenly, I realized that I’d just made a huge mistake. I never should have told her. If only I’d taken one more second to think it through, to imagine where it would lead. But now it was too late. She had me. I couldn’t even meet her eyes.

“You’re not telling me something, Shelby,” she said.

“It’s nothing, Mom.”

“Let me be the judge of that,” she said. All the lightness in her mood was gone.

“Mom, please…”

“But you’d tell your father if he asked, wouldn’t you?”

I felt awful. All those years that I’d taken his side against her without realizing it. All those years of believing him when he said Mom took things too seriously.

“She was one of them, Mom. One of the ones he took advantage of. That’s why she sent those e-mails.”

Mom’s face went blank, and her eyes had that faraway look. The one where it almost seemed as if she wasn’t seeing through them.

“Mom?” I said.

She didn’t respond.

“Hey, it’s been fun doing stuff with you this afternoon,” I said.

“Why don’t we cook dinner together tonight?”

Her eyes darted at me for an instant. She didn’t exactly leap at the suggestion, but she did nod. By then, there wasn’t a lot of time to prepare the meal, and the best Mom and I could do was make spaghetti and a salad.

“So I’m just curious,” Mom said as she chopped some carrots for the salad. “What happened between you and Ashley?”

“I’m not sure. After her dad lost his job and they moved into that apartment, we sort of lost touch.”

“Because her father lost his job and they moved?”

“I think it was more than that,” I said. “Like she had to spend more time helping her mom at home. And then, from almost the day she turned sixteen, she got a job at Playland. She works really hard. Like every day from one thirty till six and sometimes on the weekends, too.”

Mom nodded silently. We’d just finished preparing dinner when Dad called, sounding grim and rushed. “I have to go down to the police station. Something bad’s happened.”

I felt myself freeze. “What?”

“Gabe was just found… murdered.”

Feeling as if the floor beneath my feet had just vanished, I grabbed the edge of the sink. “What?” I gasped.

“That’s all I know,” Dad said. “I have to go.” The line went dead.

I closed my phone and stood there, stunned.

“What is it?” Mom asked.

I told her about Gabriel. Mom turned on the TV. A reporter was standing in front of yellow crime scene tape. I recognized the canopy of the building in the background. “Police say a passerby discovered the body behind a Dumpster about two hours ago. It appears that Gabriel Gressen was struck on the head…”

The scene switched to another reporter with Chief Jenkins, who looked even wearier and more beleaguered than the last time he’d been on TV. “We have no reason to believe that this incident is in any way connected with our investigation of the murdered girls.”

“Are you saying that because police believe the girls were asphyxiated, while Gressen was allegedly clubbed to death, it’s a different MO?” the reporter asked.

I scowled at Mom.

“Modus operandi,” she explained. “Police-speak for the way a criminal behaves.”